Hopefully this will spur people on to hack Sonos devices and create a FOSS /self hosted cloud to control them from.

Firmware updates are the issue. The Sonos speakers aren’t controlled by a service running in the cloud.

For example, if you’re playing Spotify, that comes from the cloud. But there’s no Sonos server or service sitting between you and Spotify.

Possible problems in the future include: old Sonos speakers can’t interoperate with new ones; built-in firmware is unable to play some streams (for example, if Spotify updates whatever API Sonos is using, and the old speakers aren’t updated to support that); the Sonos app on your phone no longer recognizes the old speakers, so you can’t target them; etc.

A FOSS project to produce open-source firmware could solve this. It might also need a custom app if speakers with the FOSS firmware aren’t recognized by the official Sonos app.

Possibly-unpopular opinion: for any connected device, discontinuation of service is not only inevitable, but necessary and a good idea. It takes engineering resources to keep Internet-of-Crap devices safe when exposed to the world. The two options available, 1) spending an ever-increasing fraction of your engineering resources on increasingly-obsolete gear, 2) not keeping these devices safe when exposed to the world, both suck.

You know what you're buying into when you buy a smart device, or you should.

There can, of course, be thoughtful quibbling on just how long a lifespan is appropriate.

Alternative solution: drop required internet connection on individual devices, or move it into a single hub. Reduces the attack surface, and you don't have to replace your entire setup when the connected piece loses support.

In this case, if you wanted to support streaming music, instead of each speaker streaming the music from the internet, have a hub that streams from the internet and forwards to the speakers. Connect from the hubs to the speakers via a non-proprietary protocol.

Eh, who am I kidding, that results in less device sales when they obsolete all of your devices at once, no business will ever go for it.

Yamaha already sells AV receivers which already do what you are asking for with receivers that stream content from the internet and connects with speakers in a non-proprietary protocol. The receiver acts as the hub, and uses traditional non-proprietary speaker wires or RCA jacks to connect to speakers. I would think that this concept is so obvious that there should be other brands of AV receivers which can do this as well.

Sonos' target market are consumerists obsessed with minimal friction* and "just works" marketing philosophies. There is an assumption that any conventional A/V components are difficult to figure out. But then again, I could correctly wire RCA and speaker cables among the VCR, TV, and receiver by the time I was in kindergarten because I loved helping dad out with such things, and that curiosity has led to a very good paying career in IT.

*This is friction well below reasonable for a human being with normal IQ, use some brain cells.

Hooking up those RCA and speaker cables is easy. Now connect your NAS and add an easy-to-use UI to play music from the NAS, your phone, and online services. Hint: you cannot connect the NAS with an RCA cable.

I found many ways to make those connections, but none of them had a UI that was usable by a non-technical person.

Plenty of smart TVs will connect to DLNA. So does Bubble UPNP on a phone. Any of the last 3 or 4 game console generations. Roku. Chromecast audio.

Plenty of easy, cheap, quality solutions exist if you plan to your needs. But they require a minimal effort of planning, which is the opposite of the target demographic for Sonos.

Meanwhile my 20 some-odd year old Mcintosh equipment and wilson audio speakers are as good as they've ever been. Buying "smart" entertainment devices is idiotic. I've owned two "smart" tv's and two "smart" DVD players that all stopped receiving software updates and can't use their Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon apps anymore.

Someone dismissing the complaints of people who spent many hundreds of dollars on an ecosystem as a “nothingburger” because they can now go buy something much cheaper at IKEA...

I never thought, inferred or said that.

Except the part where you said that, you mean.

Which part are you claimimg you didn’t say? That this entire story you’re commenting on, involving people who had bought expensive Sonos hardware, was a “nothingburger”? Or that you called it a nothingburger in the same two-line post you said you were buying IKEA goods cheaper than anything the affected people bought?

Epson has bricked many thousands of scanners that are capable of functioning as well today as on the days they were bought by refusing to provide updated scanning software for Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina). Instead of providing a trivial software fix, Epson encourages owners to buy new scanners which have no better functionality or output quality than those Epson has orphaned.

Epson has bricked many thousands of scanners that are capable of functioning as well today as on the days they were bought by refusing to provide updated scanning software for Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina). Instead of providing a trivial software fix, Epson encourages owners to buy new scanners which have no better functionality or output quality than those Epson has orphaned.

Canon has done the same with scanners and both macOS 10.11 and then again with 10.15. There's third-party scanning software (I'm forgetting the name right now) that would probably work with that Epson. But it costs $50-$100 (depending on the features you want), and a new flatbed scanner can be had for $50-$80…

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work just as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn't exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.Sincerely,Patrick

Patrick SpenceCEO, Sonos

It's an apology but not a change. The products are still going legacy, they still won't get "new software features." He did promise "to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible" but the need to somehow split the network is there, presumably because they will still block updates for your other devices. There are still no details about that split. Can you group devices on both sides? Can you use the same app to control them? No information about that.

The apology rings hollow when he talks about "earn back your trust" while going forward with the plan exactly as originally intended.

Meanwhile my 20 some-odd year old Mcintosh equipment and wilson audio speakers are as good as they've ever been. Buying "smart" entertainment devices is idiotic. I've owned two "smart" tv's and two "smart" DVD players that all stopped receiving software updates and can't use their Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon apps anymore.

That happened to my TV. BD player's apps still work. When those die, a cheap tablet with a HDMI output can be used to pull all of those in, via web site if no app is available. As long as the underlying monitor is functional (which of course is not guaranteed if the Vizios and Samsungs of the world have anything to say about it) there should be a way to inject the content.

My main worry is my pile of CDs and DVDs. Those require a device with an optical drive to play. Optical drives (and players that contain them) are vanishing from the stores (and, especially, the cars). Turntables are coming back; will we see CD players ditto?

Epson has bricked many thousands of scanners that are capable of functioning as well today as on the days they were bought by refusing to provide updated scanning software for Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina). Instead of providing a trivial software fix, Epson encourages owners to buy new scanners which have no better functionality or output quality than those Epson has orphaned.

Simply following the same path as HP's been blazing for the last 20 years. Why support something when you can force people to buy a new one? Yes, a few might look around and buy something else that's supported a little better, but most will just do it because they're so invested in the software and hardware ecosystem.

Hopefully this will spur people on to hack Sonos devices and create a FOSS /self hosted cloud to control them from.

Firmware updates are the issue. The Sonos speakers aren’t controlled by a service running in the cloud.

For example, if you’re playing Spotify, that comes from the cloud. But there’s no Sonos server or service sitting between you and Spotify.

Possible problems in the future include: old Sonos speakers can’t interoperate with new ones; built-in firmware is unable to play some streams (for example, if Spotify updates whatever API Sonos is using, and the old speakers aren’t updated to support that); the Sonos app on your phone no longer recognizes the old speakers, so you can’t target them; etc.

A FOSS project to produce open-source firmware could solve this. It might also need a custom app if speakers with the FOSS firmware aren’t recognized by the official Sonos app.

Don't forget that there's probably some EULA prohibiting you from messing with the software/firmware as well. Sliding in a RasPi or reverse-engineering the firmware and preventing a brick episode might be doable for an individual with knowledge, but if somebody started advertising the ability to hack old Sonos devices and make them new again a large team of lawyers would like teleport in to deal with the threat.

10+ years of support is quite a long time for IOT devices. It's inevitable that these things happen with devices that are "smart". No company can keep updating devices forever, and Sonos have been updated for far longer then most others have.

10 years is a long time. One problem, though, is that Sonos sells hardware for a long time without hardware updates. Even today they are still selling hardware that is on the verge of being obsolete.

The Playbar is still being sold today, even though it didn't get Airplay 2 because it didn't have enough power/memory. It launched seven years ago, and it will surely be sunset soon as well

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work just as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn't exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.Sincerely,Patrick

Patrick SpenceCEO, Sonos

It's an apology but not a change. The products are still going legacy, they still won't get "new software features." He did promise "to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible" but the need to somehow split the network is there, presumably because they will still block updates for your other devices. There are still no details about that split. Can you group devices on both sides? Can you use the same app to control them? No information about that.

The apology rings hollow when he talks about "earn back your trust" while going forward with the plan exactly as originally intended.

There is a huge difference in how things are handled here. If they just don't get any new features, that's not a big problem. This has already happened before - like the speakers sunset now and the Playbar didn't get Airplay 2.

If it, like most assume, will mean that some of the speakers in your system will stop working with the rest, or that if left as is, streaming services will soon break due to changes in these services, that's a much bigger problem.

If they count that as bug fixes, that will go a long way to avoid the problem. If they fix it so that the app can work with different versions of the Sonos OS and that the system itself can have a mix of versions, the problem will mostly be one of "we really screwed up how we communicated this."

What are these speakers are doing today that they weren't doing 10 years ago to now require so much more memory and CPU?

I recognize that things need to move on. It's clear why an old video dongle like a Roku or Chromecast may not support evolutions in a video service where the UI has become fancier or the service has become more complex.

It's not so clear with audio, where there's no UI and bitrates and compression algorithms have not changed much at all in the last 10 years.

Is it perhaps just that software got bigger in 10 years in the interest of developer productivity?

The main use case for the oldest of these devices when launched was playing your locally stored music library. The oldest of these were launched in 2008.

Since then, music consumption has changed to become almost exclusively streaming. They have added streaming, a ton of services, casting from Google devices, Spotify connect (and the Tidal version of this), Airplay 2 (not on these devices, though), bonding devices together as 5.1 for TV setups - and probably a lot of other things.

Sonos CEO just sent an email to customers saying he was sorry. He says that he “heard us” and promises that all old devices will continue to work.

They are working on a way to split the systems between old and new so that each will work. New devices can grow and interoperate, while old devices will just work and receive security patches and bug fixes for as long as possible. He recognized the investment we’ve made and would like us to upgrade when we find reason, not because we’re feeling forced to do so.

“Sincerely, Patrick” no less.

Check your inbox. (Mine wound up in the Top Promotion folder in Gmail)

Epson has bricked many thousands of scanners that are capable of functioning as well today as on the days they were bought by refusing to provide updated scanning software for Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina). Instead of providing a trivial software fix, Epson encourages owners to buy new scanners which have no better functionality or output quality than those Epson has orphaned.

Canon has done the same with scanners and both macOS 10.11 and then again with 10.15. There's third-party scanning software (I'm forgetting the name right now) that would probably work with that Epson. But it costs $50-$100 (depending on the features you want), and a new flatbed scanner can be had for $50-$80…

You can add Fujitsu to that list. I just looked and my Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M is in the same boat. Grr.

A bit of Googling says the third-party offerings seem to be either VueScan or ExactScan. I haven 't looked into either. Guess I'll be looking at another source of hassle when I finally get around to upgrading my Mac Mini to Catalina.

Sonos CEO just sent an email to customers saying he was sorry. He says that he “heard us” and promises that all old devices will continue to work.

They are working on a way to split the systems between old and new so that each will work. New devices can grow and interoperate, while old devices will just work and receive security patches and bug fixes for as long as possible. He recognized the investment we’ve made and would like us to upgrade when we find reason, not because we’re feeling forced to do so.

“Sincerely, Patrick” no less.

Check your inbox. (Mine wound up in the Top Promotion folder in Gmail)

So, two or three days later, suddenly the old things can still work.

It was always planned obsolescence. It was never a technical requirement to kill your old speakers.

They might have backed off here, but my trust level for that company is now quite low.

Like cutting tags off of stuffed animals and clothing wasn't annoying enough.

That article says:

Quote:

These aren't cheap knock-off Sonos speakers. They have true Sonos sound and match well with the rest of the Sonos range.

Compared directly to HomePod, there isn't quite as much bass and we'd give the win to HomePod head-to-head. But, these speakers are less than a third of the price and a stereo pair with mounting brackets still costs less than a single HomePod at retail.

These speakers sounded nearly as good as our Sonos Play One set, but are just a hair weaker. They are crisp, articulate, and full sounding without being distorted at high volumes.

These are easily the best sounding $100 Wi-Fi speakers we've tested —especially with the number of streaming features we've seen. There isn't a Wi-Fi speaker that can compete at this price point.

I'm convinced Apple Insider is getting money from Sonos. Their Sonos reviews have always been ridiculously positive and they promote Sonos constantly. I have both Sonos devices and Homepods by the way and the Homepods are much better sounding except for too much bass in alot of cases.

Possibly-unpopular opinion: for any connected device, discontinuation of service is not only inevitable, but necessary and a good idea. It takes engineering resources to keep Internet-of-Crap devices safe when exposed to the world. The two options available, 1) spending an ever-increasing fraction of your engineering resources on increasingly-obsolete gear, 2) not keeping these devices safe when exposed to the world, both suck.

You know what you're buying into when you buy a smart device, or you should.

There can, of course, be thoughtful quibbling on just how long a lifespan is appropriate.

Alternative solution: drop required internet connection on individual devices, or move it into a single hub. Reduces the attack surface, and you don't have to replace your entire setup when the connected piece loses support.

In this case, if you wanted to support streaming music, instead of each speaker streaming the music from the internet, have a hub that streams from the internet and forwards to the speakers. Connect from the hubs to the speakers via a non-proprietary protocol.

Eh, who am I kidding, that results in less device sales when they obsolete all of your devices at once, no business will ever go for it.

Yamaha already sells AV receivers which already do what you are asking for with receivers that stream content from the internet and connects with speakers in a non-proprietary protocol. The receiver acts as the hub, and uses traditional non-proprietary speaker wires or RCA jacks to connect to speakers. I would think that this concept is so obvious that there should be other brands of AV receivers which can do this as well.

Sonos' target market are consumerists obsessed with minimal friction* and "just works" marketing philosophies. There is an assumption that any conventional A/V components are difficult to figure out. But then again, I could correctly wire RCA and speaker cables among the VCR, TV, and receiver by the time I was in kindergarten because I loved helping dad out with such things, and that curiosity has led to a very good paying career in IT.*This is friction well below reasonable for a human being with normal IQ, use some brain cells.

Feel superior much?Many Sonos customers have done the AV route and they don't want cables all over the place and the complexity of your typical av receiver. Sonos is a lifestyle product and a lot of Sonos owners know what they are giving up for something that looks good, sounds decent, minimal cables, and easy to setup and use. I have a mix of high end audiophile equipment, HomePods and Sonos.By the way practically everyone here is in IT. You aren't impressing anyone.

Sonos CEO just sent an email to customers saying he was sorry. He says that he “heard us” and promises that all old devices will continue to work.

They are working on a way to split the systems between old and new so that each will work. New devices can grow and interoperate, while old devices will just work and receive security patches and bug fixes for as long as possible. He recognized the investment we’ve made and would like us to upgrade when we find reason, not because we’re feeling forced to do so.

“Sincerely, Patrick” no less.

Check your inbox. (Mine wound up in the Top Promotion folder in Gmail)

So, two or three days later, suddenly the old things can still work.

It was always planned obsolescence. It was never a technical requirement to kill your old speakers.

They might have backed off here, but my trust level for that company is now quite low.

They haven't backed off at all. Your previous devices were never going to stop working They just restated their previous position and put a little more emphasis on coming up with a solution by May. Nothing has changed but slightly improved messaging. They should have said what the solution was at the same time they announced this but I suspect they wanted to panic people into buying new devices. Just sold my new Sonos amp ad the rest of it is on CL. I wasn't happy with the direction Sonos was going anyway.

10+ years of support is quite a long time for IOT devices. It's inevitable that these things happen with devices that are "smart". No company can keep updating devices forever, and Sonos have been updated for far longer then most others have.

10 years is a long time. One problem, though, is that Sonos sells hardware for a long time without hardware updates. Even today they are still selling hardware that is on the verge of being obsolete.

The Playbar is still being sold today, even though it didn't get Airplay 2 because it didn't have enough power/memory. It launched seven years ago, and it will surely be sunset soon as well

The Playbar is grossly outdated and they should be embarrassed to still be selling it at all let alone for $699.

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work just as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn't exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.Sincerely,Patrick

Patrick SpenceCEO, Sonos

It's an apology but not a change. The products are still going legacy, they still won't get "new software features." He did promise "to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible" but the need to somehow split the network is there, presumably because they will still block updates for your other devices. There are still no details about that split. Can you group devices on both sides? Can you use the same app to control them? No information about that.

The apology rings hollow when he talks about "earn back your trust" while going forward with the plan exactly as originally intended.

There is a huge difference in how things are handled here. If they just don't get any new features, that's not a big problem. This has already happened before - like the speakers sunset now and the Playbar didn't get Airplay 2.

If it, like most assume, will mean that some of the speakers in your system will stop working with the rest, or that if left as is, streaming services will soon break due to changes in these services, that's a much bigger problem.

If they count that as bug fixes, that will go a long way to avoid the problem. If they fix it so that the app can work with different versions of the Sonos OS and that the system itself can have a mix of versions, the problem will mostly be one of "we really screwed up how we communicated this."

I'll believe that when they release the details about splitting the system. Here's that quote again, from the CEO's email:

We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state.

Modern products will work together, and legacy products will work together, but it's clear here that modern products will not work with legacy products, which is why "split" is needed in the first place. That means no grouping modern products with legacy products; it's unclear what it means for app support.

I think you can accomplish basically the same thing with Volumio and some RaspPis. I have an RaspPi 3 and a Zero W, both with DACs on them, and can simulcast my music to them. What's more, my Onkyo receiver has WiFi and does the same thing. My Synology Nas can be used to cast my music library or internet radio to all 3 at once.Works on Airplay, which is an Apple technology, I think. I've not used Sonos so I can't compare the two as far as how "in-sync" the devices are when playing, admittedly the audio can get slightly out of sync between the three devices in my setup but that is probably because they are all using very different hardware and it isn't bad enough that you notice it much moving from room to room. The big advantage being, open-source software and able to use whatever hardware/speakers you want.

Anyone who starts a comment with “you can replace Sonos with” and then needs a whole paragraph to explain how the alternative works doesn’t understand why people buy Sonos.

I can explain Sonos in a single sentence. I plug as many speakers as I want into power outlets, run the setup on my phone, then listen to music in any room, or all my rooms.

They sell several models of high-end out-of-the-box plug-and-play devices but they cost several hundred dollars and I am cheap, but since you apparently are one of the people who dropped thousands on Sonos maybe you can afford them. https://volumio.org/product/volumio-primo/I'm good with a little DIY and a $50 DAC, but to each their own.Volumio streams music simultaneously to any Volumio or Airplay device. Is this not, essentially, what Sonos does? Except it isn't locked-in to a proprietary nonsense world where speakers last 5 years.

Maybe I'm misreading, but it looks to me like the Volumio products are a way to connect modern media (streaming audio, both from internet sources and your local library) to legacy audio equipment (traditional speakers or stereo system). Sonos doesn't really focus on this—they have one product that can do that, but it's not really their USP. Sonos' USP is connecting legacy media (your existing CDs, LPs, etc.) to modern audio equipment they produce (wifi speakers), and then more recently they've added connecting modern media to modern audio equipment. Certainly that's what got my attention: an easy way to have small speakers that sound pretty good given an environment where acoustically optimal placement is impossible, and that can play my existing music (CDs and FM in particular) without needing to run wires all over the house.

So, no, I don't think Volumio does essentially what Sonos does. What Sonos does is provide quality wifi speakers that you can either use on their own or integrate into an existing audio setup. It doesn't look like Volumio even sells speakers?

I had to look it up because I don't use analog playback features, but they do offer playback of analog devices of you buy a software license. And seems to me the modularity of it is a benefit, I mean this comment section is full of people vowing to not buy Sonos again because the control units coupled-in with the speakers are becoming obsolete. A separate device, like Volumio, can be moved to any speakers you wish.

Someone dismissing the complaints of people who spent many hundreds of dollars on an ecosystem as a “nothingburger” because they can now go buy something much cheaper at IKEA...

I never thought, inferred or said that.

Except the part where you said that, you mean.

Which part are you claimimg you didn’t say.

It’s right up there for all to see, emphasis and all.

Since you ignored this part of my post, I’ll repeat it:

Which part are you claiming you didn’t say? That this entire story you’re commenting on, involving people who had bought expensive Sonos hardware, was a “nothingburger”? Or that you called it a nothingburger in the same two-line post you said you were buying IKEA goods cheaper than anything the affected people bought?

Apologies after the fact help little in gaining our trust back. We'll see how long they support the old stuff. I dint ues Sonos, but we have kids who do. It's pretty nice. But not up to my standards for quality and functionality.

Well, of course, nothing rises to that level so far - that I can afford.

In a service model, the terms clearly stipulate a duration of the terms (e.g. Office 365 typically grants rights for one year, and a user pays a service/license fee for that period), in a purchase model, there is a transfer of ownership (and rights to the full benefits of the ownership). This move makes the concept of ownership quite vague: Sonos keeps full control over the device(s) and the usage thereof. So one does not buy a Sonos device, one gets the right to use it for a period that is however arbitrarily set by the service provider at an unpredictable time after entering into the agreement. Is this proper commercial practice?

Separate components is still the way to go. I still don't get why Google killed off the Audio Chromecast. I have one and it's great, have it hooked up to my Yamaha amp and Paradigm Reference speakers. Sounds amazing.

There seriously need to be some kind of laws in place about updates to devices like this. Even if it's not for the consumer's benefit, but instead as a way to keep stuff that should last 20-50 years from ending up in a landfill after 5 years because the software was allowed to stagnate to the point of being useless.

On the one hand, I look forward to opening my Sonos app and not have it beg me to update every other day.

On the other hand, if I lose the ability to pipe in audio from a streaming service, then the rage juices will flow.

One workaround is the AUX port on the back of the Play:1:3:5 connected to a Bluetooth dongle; then stream directly from your phone. I think you can even pipe an Amazon Echo into the Aux port as another clunky option.

Epson has bricked many thousands of scanners that are capable of functioning as well today as on the days they were bought by refusing to provide updated scanning software for Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina). Instead of providing a trivial software fix, Epson encourages owners to buy new scanners which have no better functionality or output quality than those Epson has orphaned.

Canon has done the same with scanners and both macOS 10.11 and then again with 10.15. There's third-party scanning software (I'm forgetting the name right now) that would probably work with that Epson. But it costs $50-$100 (depending on the features you want), and a new flatbed scanner can be had for $50-$80…

Those are issues caused by OSX development choices. Apple bricked your hardware, not Epson or Canon.

There is a reason Microsoft maintains so very much backward compatibility and frequently provides their own drivers. And if I had to bet, you could probably spin up a Windows VM on your Mac, passthrough the USB to the VM, and scan to a shared folder (such certainly works VMware Workstation, assuming Fusion has same passthrough functionality).

Hell, in the move from 32-bit XP to 64-bit XP / Vista / 7, there were lots of printers and MFDs which initially didn't get drivers. The fix was simple -- redecorating the header of the INF file and installing the drivers. There are reasons why a stable ABI is useful for a consumer operating system.

Both of the above scenarios both have trivial work arounds, and it's not like the threat was that the equipment would be locked out from functionality remotely -- which is the case with Sonos. Also the price of hardware is about an order of magnitude different and similarly the typical consumer expected lifespan very different.

Years ago, I started with the original SliMP3 player (a small networked audio player), which fortunately was paired with an open-source server that you installed locally. Over the years it was sold to Logitech, who eventually shut it down so they could replace it with a proprietary solution.

However, those open-source seeds planted by the original company continued to flourish, and now there are lots of open-source resources to keep the ecosystem going. There are software players that play on Raspberry Pis and other cheap hardware, and there are people developing add-ons to the server that allow its functionality to grow (for example, they've recently added Amazon Alexa integration).

Without open-source, you will always be at the mercy of corporations and planned obsolescence. Choose wisely in the future.

Possibly-unpopular opinion: for any connected device, discontinuation of service is not only inevitable, but necessary and a good idea. It takes engineering resources to keep Internet-of-Crap devices safe when exposed to the world. The two options available, 1) spending an ever-increasing fraction of your engineering resources on increasingly-obsolete gear, 2) not keeping these devices safe when exposed to the world, both suck.

You know what you're buying into when you buy a smart device, or you should.

There can, of course, be thoughtful quibbling on just how long a lifespan is appropriate.

Alternative solution: drop required internet connection on individual devices, or move it into a single hub. Reduces the attack surface, and you don't have to replace your entire setup when the connected piece loses support.

In this case, if you wanted to support streaming music, instead of each speaker streaming the music from the internet, have a hub that streams from the internet and forwards to the speakers. Connect from the hubs to the speakers via a non-proprietary protocol.

Eh, who am I kidding, that results in less device sales when they obsolete all of your devices at once, no business will ever go for it.

This is essentially how Sonos already works. One Sonos device is designated the "bridge" to your home network and streaming services all route from the internet through that bridge device and onto the mesh wireless network that Sonos runs internally between their devices. Any Sonos device can be that bridge, though - it isn't a dedicated device.

It's also worth noting that there is no "Sonos cloud" in any way for their systems. Your phone has to be on the same network as your Sonos bridge device (or you can optionally allow your phone to even connect directly into their wireless mesh network if you want) in order to control Sonos via the app.

Sonos did a lot of things right with their system design and was the deciding factor for me to buy into their ecosystem despite being otherwise overpriced. I believed the extremely high price was worth it for what seemed like a future-proofed product design that would last a lot longer than cheaper competition. It is actually for this reason that their announcement was so surprising and frustrating for customers like me - it reeked of forced and unnecessary obsolescence. I guess the joke's on us for not taking the "5 years commitment" more seriously, but Sonos will need to tread carefully as they start to get more effective competition - they could end up obseleting themselves out of the market if they don't continue to show value for their extremely high prices.